"The East German 'Stasi' and the Making of the Autocratic State in Vietnam"

Term:

Sep 03, 2013

-

May 23, 2014

Dr. Grossheim is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Southeast Studies at Passau University/Germany. His research and teaching interests focus on modern Vietnamese history, Cold War history, intelligence studies and memory. He has previously been Visiting Associate Professor at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and at Humboldt University Berlin; a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for East and Southeast Asian Studies at Lund University/Sweden; and a Fellow of the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Cold War History, and Jahrbuch für Politik und Geschichte (Yearbook of Politics and History). Dr. Grossheim received his M.A. and his doctoral degree in Southeast Asian history at Passau University. Since twenty years he has been teaching pre-departure courses for German diplomats and experts bound for Vietnam at the German Academy for International Cooperation in Bad Honnef.

Project Summary

This project examines how the former East German Ministry of State Security contributed to state building and “modernization” in North Vietnam by providing considerable aid to Hanoi’s security apparatus from the 1960s until 1989. It draws mainly on untapped Stasi files on this inter-communist cooperation. The project will analyze the central role that the East German Ministry of Public Security has played and still plays in protecting the authoritarian one-party state in Vietnam against its external and internal enemies since before and after the start of the reform period in 1986. The research project thus relates directly to contemporary policy issues and the primary theme of “transitions from autocracy.” The East German-Vietnam case study provides an example of the obstacles to that democratic transition to this very day.

Major Publications

“The Lao Động Party, Culture and the Campaign against ‘Modern Revisionism’: North Vietnam before the Second Indochina War.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies (accepted for publication)

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Former Wilson Center Fellow Martin Grossheim examines the relationship between the East Germany Stasi and Vietnam, arguing that despite its "second-tier" status in the socialist world, the GDR had a profound impact on the development and evolution of state socialism in Vietnam.

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